What the Savant Syndrome Can Tell Us About the Nature and Nurture of Talent Leon K

What the Savant Syndrome Can Tell Us About the Nature and Nurture of Talent Leon K. Miller Recent research has begun to illuminate the composition and development of exceptional skills in those with intellectual disability. I argue that this research is rele- vant to more general discussions of talent. First, it provides a special opportunity to deconstruct talent in different domains. Because savants typically lack the general intellectual skills usually present in those with more domain-restricted achievement, this analysis helps to delineate both the core components of talent in those domains and how more general skills affect the expression and development of that talent. Second, savants often have disabilities that can modify the direction of development in unusual ways. Examining these conditions suggests new ways of thinking about how talent may be nurtured. Introduction The “savant syndrome” typically refers to the presence of exceptional skill in the context of more general, occasionally severe, intellectual impairment (Miller, 1999). Savant skills are observed most commonly in music, the visual arts (primarily drawing), and in certain types of calculation (e.g., “calendar calculating”). The existence of savant behavior has been used as evidence for both “nature” and “nurture” positions in the debate about the origins of exceptional skill. For example, Gardner (1983) argued that the appearance of savant skill without any apparent direct tutoring in children with intellectual impairment indicates distinct varieties of intelligence. Moreover, the fact that these skills are often mani- fested at an early age suggests an important innate factor in their emergence. On the other hand, the observation that savants rehearse their skills extensively, sometimes obsessively (Howe, 1989), is used by proponents of a strong nurture position in the development of talent (Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998). Like the proverbial elephant being examined by blind men, the savant syndrome generates some conflicting conclusions about exceptional skill. Leon K. Miller is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago, and a Fellow at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Journal for the Education of the Gifted. Vol. 28, No. 3/4, 2005, pp. 361–373. Copyright ©2005 The Association for the Gifted, Reston, VA 20191-1589. 361 362 Journal for the Education of the Gifted In fact, perhaps the savant syndrome is simply irrelevant to discussion of the nature and nurture of talent. The developmental course and the kind of nurture seen in savants may be atypi- cal. The young visual artist Nadia drew compulsively with any material available for several years, then lost both interest and technique, in spite of attempts to improve her drawing skills through formal instruction (Selfe, 1995). This does not fit easily into any traditional model of nurtured talent. Attempts to reproduce savant behavior by traditional techniques may produce a skill resembling those seen in savants (Ericsson & Faivre, 1988). However, it is by no means clear whether these cases capture the peculiarities of motivation and knowledge structure seen in savants. Nor do savants present unambiguous support for nature ver- sions of talent development. The early appearance of a skill is no guarantee that it is immune from environmental factors, given what we have discovered about infants’ abilities to respond to and be affected by their environment. Nor, of course, does later emergence necessarily specify an environmental determinant. By itself, time of emergence is neutral, not necessarily implicat- ing either environmental or genetic effects (Simonton, this issue). Furthermore, the savant syndrome may not lend itself to the kinds of behavioral genetic designs used to identify and eval- uate hereditary and environmental contributions to variation in behavior. First, savants are quite rare. Assembling a sample with sufficient power to detect behavior-genetic linkages would be a daunting task. Second, savants typically have a variety of other physical and psychological impairments (Miller, 1999). It would be an additional challenge to assemble a sample sufficiently homogenous to permit strong inferences about etiology. Nevertheless, I believe that a careful examination of the par- ticulars of savant behavior and its developmental context can be useful to discussions about talent. Savant skills are, by defini- tion, “splintered” or dissociated from the usual matrix in which one usually finds talent. This provides a special opportunity to deconstruct exceptional skill. Second, savants provide us with an opportunity to observe nurturing environments quite different from those found in traditional accounts of talent development. In doing so, they may enrich our ideas about the factors that affect that development. Let me expand upon each of these points in turn. The Savant Syndrome 363 Savants and the Nature of Talent A common distinction in the literature on exceptional skill is that between achievement restricted to a particular content area (e.g., mathematics) or activity (sculpture, musical performance) and more generalized skills associated with acquiring, organizing, and applying information across content areas. Gagné (1999) suggested that these latter skills reflect a more abstract problem-solving ability or processing capacity that is less amenable to, or affected by, direct instruction. Or, the distinction might be, psychometrically, between a general “g” factor linked to language and its role in human cognition and sources of individual variation in performance less dependent upon language (Tannenbaum, 1986). Agreement on the distinction between general intellectual factors and specific skills is by no means universal. Howe et al. (1998) argued that the emergence of specific talent is merely the conse- quence of applying more general skills to a particular content area, the area chosen being a function of opportunity, parental pressure, exposure, and so forth. Complicating the issue is the empirical evidence of their association; individuals who show special talents in certain subjects or activities may also do well on measures of general intelligence (Lynn, Wilson, & Gault, 1989; Simonton, 1994). These correlations support the hypothesis that talent independent of more general factors is a fiction. How does savant behavior fit into this framework? First, savants typically achieve, at best, only moderate levels of performance on measures of intellectual function outside their specific area of interest. Second, comparisons of savant accomplishments and their counterpart in those without impairment typically show that the skills in a given content area are broadly similar (Hermelin, 2001; Miller, 1989). The similarity seems strong enough to justify calling at least some savants prodigiously talented (Treffert, 1989). Thus, comparisons of savants and others in a given domain might be a way to delineate that part of exceptional skill that represents its point of contact with more general intellectual factors and that is independent of these factors (Hermelin).1 This suggests a detailed examination of individual savant behavior in the context of well-established norms of performance or with appropriate comparison groups in different content areas. This research has yielded tentative component skills important for the emergence of savant performance in different domains. Among musical savants, absolute pitch (Hermelin, 2001; Miller, 1989, Ockleford, 1998), aural melody retention and harmonic analysis (Miller, 1989; Ockleford, 1998; Sloboda, Hermelin, & O’Connor, 364 Journal for the Education of the Gifted 1985), and an ability to reproduce what is heard (Miller, 1989; Oe, 1995) have all been described as important component skills. Among drawing savants, visual memory, especially detail retention (Mottron & Belleville, 1995; Selfe, 1983); sensitivity to information specifying depth and perspective (Hermelin, 2001; Mottron & Belleville, 1995); and an ability to depict what is seen (O’Connor & Hermelin, 1987; Selfe, 1983) are common strengths. Among calendar calculators, event memory (Hermelin, 2001; Sacks, 1985; Young & Nettlebeck, 1994) and a tendency to attribute personal meaning to date and numerical information (Howe & Smith, 1988; Sacks, 1985) are often mentioned as significant factors. Given the relative rarity of research in this area, of course, these lists are tentative. Still, they suggest that these kinds of building blocks to exceptional skill may exist independent of more general levels of cognitive achievement. Examination of savant skills also suggests some anomalous weaknesses. For example, O’Connor and Hermelin (1987) found that drawing savants’ reproductions of figures from memory were as accurate as those of gifted artists without mental impairment, while their ability to recognize a previously seen figure was no bet- ter than that of a comparison group with mental retardation. Miller (1989) reported that musical savants may have difficulty with sim- ple discrimination judgments (“same vs. different”) on successive tones, though they may be able to identify these tones independent of context, so-called absolute pitch. Both cases apparently represent a variation of the usual developmental sequence in which recogni- tion and discrimination are typically much more advanced than reproduction within a perceptual domain (Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 1993). Second, in their exercise of savant skills, savants

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